Expats battle over freeze on state pensions

By Alison Steed

12:01AM BST 12 Jun 2004

Retiring overseas is a struggle for 500,000 British pensioners who have had their state pensions frozen at the level paid when they first left the United Kingdom.

Annette Carson, left, is challenging the British Government's policy which includes demanding repayment of what it regards as overpaid pensions - a total of £13,000 in the case of former Royal Marine Bill Kirkham.

Mr Kirkham, 81, who served with the Marine Naval Base Defence Organisation 1 in Crete in 1941, has worked for the Government in one form or another all his life, and feels particularly bitter about the way he has been treated.

He joined the then Overseas Development Agency in 1951, with postings to Malaysia, Tanganyika, now Tanzania, and was even expelled from Uganda, where he was the deputy commissioner of prisons, by Idi Amin in 1973.

Despite making such sacrifices for his country, Mr Kirkham has lost about £250 a month from his state pension. It is now £54 a week instead of £102, simply because he lives in Cape Town, South Africa, rather than, say, the UK or anywhere in the European Union.

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Pensioners living in a number of other Commonwealth countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada are also suffering from the apparently arbitrary pension freeze.

Mr Kirkham still receives £360 a month from his Department of International Development pension, which is also paid by the Government and is uprated annually in line with inflation. So it was reasonable for him to assume his state pension would be similarly increased.

Mr Kirkham is so unhappy about his treatment by the Government he has considered returning both his CBE and his OBE to Tony Blair. He decided against such drastic action because he has "too much fondness for the Royal family". He added: "But what good is it doing me?

"I can't afford to pay back the £13,000. It is not a great amount these days but when you are my age it is a nasty shock. It means we don't go out very much. We have to be careful, rates have more than doubled here, and the price of food has gone up."

Graham Chrystie, of law firm Thomas Eggar, is representing Mr Kirkham and Miss Carson, another expat in South Africa. She has already had two rulings made against her, and costs awarded against her, but has an appeal hearing at the House of Lords on February 28.

Mr Chrystie said: "As Mr Kirkham was recruited in the UK and sent overseas, he was legally entitled to all UK benefits including 'free' NHS. He paid UK tax and was aware that he would be treated as a UK resident when he retired to any country. The DWP clearly knew Mr Kirkham was overseas from correspondence passed to me.

"The reduction of Mr Kirkham's pension is a real body blow in itself to an 81-year-old man with no way of making up the money. His wife has a small personal pension and is dependent on him. Prior to his DWP pension reduction he was finding it difficult to make ends meet. His savings are exhausted.

"Whose 'mistake' was it to pay indexation to Mr Kirkham? Clearly UK Government departments have a case to answer."

Any appeal Mr Kirkham could make against the DWP has been suspended until the outcome of the House of Lords hearing is known, leaving him "in limbo".

Sadly, he is not alone. In the year to March 31, the DWP sent out 13,907 debt notices to British pensioners abroad, and these are not issued to recover a debt below £40, the DWP said.

A spokesman added: "The money is recoverable if the individual misrepresented or did not disclose a material fact. It is the responsibility of the individual to make the department aware of their current circumstances and that is made clear in our literature.

"We do look at cases on an individual basis but, clearly, we have an obligation to safeguard public funds."

Miss Carson feels the big guns of the British Government are being turned against her: "It has been frightening. What people don't realise is that this is not a class action. I do not have 40,000 other people in court sharing the exposure.

"The problem is there are a lot of people around the world who have their fingers crossed, hoping and praying this case will bring them a result. They are the people I have in mind when I proceeded in this case. I feel cheated, and indignant."